robert132 wrote:With regard to the Darius wormhole, do we KNOW for a fact that the Darius end of this thing is a single tram line or could it be in fact a two or more tram line junction?

The Darius Terminus is one of four destinations from the Felix Junction. I know of no hint anywhere that it is possible for two junctions to be linked.

Darned! Forgot about the secret Felix junction. The MAlign hasn't gotten the legal claim on it and is trying the obtain it. I forget just how secret Felix is. Is it like the SKM's situation where the information is out there, but just hidden or is it still truly secret? The ownership of the system is established, knowledge of the WHJ isn't.

If the GA twigs on that search and investigates it as some long shot chance to find the MAlign's Bolthole, that is likely the best shot of discovering Darius.

JohnRoth wrote:Wormholes have "mass" limits and then need time to recover before another transit can happen. That mass limit allows the defender to size the blocking force appropriately.

There must be some inaccuracies in my understanding. Please correct me.

There is a mass limit, but recovery time varies with the mass transited. So long as the mass limit, specifically, isn't transited which totally shuts down the wormhole for hours? Correct?

So if the MAN would transit many very small targets that are difficult to kill for some reason of new technology, while using the distraction to sneak in the cavalry...

Jonathan_S wrote:You are basically right. Each use does create a "transit window" which briefly destabilizes the wormhole, blocking transits. And the minimum "transit windows" is 10 seconds, no matter how small the ship(s) tonnage. IIRC about 2.5 mtons is as large as you can go without creating a longer delay, and past that it's proportional to the square of the tonnage so larger transits create much larger delays.

So you could stream in a suicidal super-BC every 10 seconds. Of course at that tight a sequencing after the first few have been killed the follow on ships will be immolated by impact with the debris without any further action by the defenders.

As a general rule though you'd need significantly more forces to assault through a wormhole than you'd need to defeat it's defenders if you sent the force through hyper. So even if we accept that the MAlign can grow or install disregard for utter disregard for personal survival in their ship's crews, and had no care about the human cost of the attack, the economic cost would be far lower attacking conventionally than going through the wormhole -- so it still seems quite unlikely they'd do so.

I C.

Unless, of course, the wormhole assault is simply used as a distraction to sneak ships into the system via hyper. The system might be too busy or distracted to register the faint signals emanating from the entry vector of the MAN's stealthed ships.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble.—cthia's father. Incident in ?Axiom of Common Sense

Darius has the availability of more than just the resorces in it's own system.There are several wormholes/termini in the essentially private wormhole network that has one branch leading to Darius. Every one of those wormholes should have a star at the other end. We know the Torch wormhole is not being used to keep it from being understood. The one that Mannerheim is attempting to aquire the system of may or may not be getting any use. I don't recall which terminus Albrect used to go to and from the RF meeting.

Every one of those "internal" star systems should have a vast amount of materials even if they don't have a habitable planet. Setting up an extraction operations or even manufacturing operation just short of the starship yards of Grendlesbane could be safely done from Darius as the Alignment controls the access to the network and the Dariani sent there would have no ability to leave the star system they were working in or get information out. There is also the question of what is within reasonable hyperspace travel time from Darius that could also be harvested for materials? We don't know where Darius is relative to ANY other star system in the Honorverse though it would seem that it is a long way in any direction to even possibly have an explorer/survey ship attempt to get to a nearby star through hyperspace. Again, even a system with no habitable planet is going to have a massive amount of raw materials. All you have to do is go looking for it and then get it home. The cost may or may not be practical for the Alignment but they certainly could do that.

The Alignment could probably build out extraction and manufacturing operations in two or more of the internal systems to the network, the only real limit is how fast can the produce and train the workforce to build and then operate said extraction, manufacturing and the shipping needed to move the product around.

Unless, of course, the wormhole assault is simply used as a distraction to sneak ships into the system via hyper. The system might be too busy or distracted to register the faint signals emanating from the entry vector of the MAN's stealthed ships.

I suppose, but there should be less costly distractions if that's what you're going for.

Say, drop out of hyper say around a billion km from the Junction making a nice visible splash, then launch graser torps at it's defensive forts or civilian stations, and hyper out. You're far enough out you should have time to hyper out before any return MDM fire, much less rapid reaction forces, can reach you but the torps are fast enough to get out of the search zone before the any rapid response force shows up to search.

Or just use the tactic kzt advocates which is keep popping in and out of hyper a light week or two out and generate vastly more areas to search than any reaction force can hope to - and either slip in your stealthy folks way further out, or just as a random one of the emergence signals.

And to distract Manticore by attacking through its junction you'd first have to defeat the defensive forces that guard each of it's remote termini... The tactic isn't physically impossible - but I'm just failing to imagine situations where it's the best available tactic.

Jonathan_S wrote:And to distract Manticore by attacking through its junction you'd first have to defeat the defensive forces that guard each of it's remote termini... The tactic isn't physically impossible - but I'm just failing to imagine situations where it's the best available tactic.

You could distract Manticore by attacking the guard forces at a terminus. It's a lot more survivable than trying to force the junction.

Brigade XO wrote:Darius has the availability of more than just the resorces in it's own system.There are several wormholes/termini in the essentially private wormhole network that has one branch leading to Darius. Every one of those wormholes should have a star at the other end. We know the Torch wormhole is not being used to keep it from being understood. The one that Mannerheim is attempting to aquire the system of may or may not be getting any use. I don't recall which terminus Albrect used to go to and from the RF meeting.

It wasn't specified, although since Felix is only 10ly from Mannerheim, that was one end. If he used one of those termini at all, it means that one of the two unknown termini is relatively close to Mesa. If he didn't, then Mannerheim is relatively close to Mesa.

Brigade XO wrote:Every one of those "internal" star systems should have a vast amount of materials even if they don't have a habitable planet. Setting up an extraction operations or even manufacturing operation just short of the starship yards of Grendlesbane could be safely done from Darius as the Alignment controls the access to the network and the Dariani sent there would have no ability to leave the star system they were working in or get information out. There is also the question of what is within reasonable hyperspace travel time from Darius that could also be harvested for materials? We don't know where Darius is relative to ANY other star system in the Honorverse though it would seem that it is a long way in any direction to even possibly have an explorer/survey ship attempt to get to a nearby star through hyperspace. Again, even a system with no habitable planet is going to have a massive amount of raw materials. All you have to do is go looking for it and then get it home. The cost may or may not be practical for the Alignment but they certainly could do that.

The Alignment could probably build out extraction and manufacturing operations in two or more of the internal systems to the network, the only real limit is how fast can the produce and train the workforce to build and then operate said extraction, manufacturing and the shipping needed to move the product around.

They've already disclosed the existence of the Felix junction and two of the termini (neither Darius nor the Twins, obviously) to the upper echelons of the Mannerheim government, which is being used as internal justification for buying the rights to Felix from the four companies that currently hold exclusive rights to it.

Jonathan_S wrote:And to distract Manticore by attacking through its junction you'd first have to defeat the defensive forces that guard each of it's remote termini... The tactic isn't physically impossible - but I'm just failing to imagine situations where it's the best available tactic.

You could distract Manticore by attacking the guard forces at a terminus. It's a lot more survivable than trying to force the junction.

That would work nicely if you're looking to distract them to slip ships into the system containing that terminus. It wouldn't work so well as a distraction to slip ships into the Manticoran system.

Jonathan_S wrote:You could distract Manticore by attacking the guard forces at a terminus. It's a lot more survivable than trying to force the junction.

That would work nicely if you're looking to distract them to slip ships into the system containing that terminus. It wouldn't work so well as a distraction to slip ships into the Manticoran system.[/quote]You'll likely get significant forces being moved to reinforce the terminus. And some of the terminus are not very heavily protected.

The trick with all of these is coordination. You are running things that have to be carefully coordinated and messengers between teams take days or months. So if one team goes off the rails then things can go south is a hurry.

Unless, of course, the wormhole assault is simply used as a distraction to sneak ships into the system via hyper. The system might be too busy or distracted to register the faint signals emanating from the entry vector of the MAN's stealthed ships.

I suppose, but there should be less costly distractions if that's what you're going for.

Say, drop out of hyper say around a billion km from the Junction making a nice visible splash, then launch graser torps at it's defensive forts or civilian stations, and hyper out. You're far enough out you should have time to hyper out before any return MDM fire, much less rapid reaction forces, can reach you but the torps are fast enough to get out of the search zone before the any rapid response force shows up to search.

Or just use the tactic kzt advocates which is keep popping in and out of hyper a light week or two out and generate vastly more areas to search than any reaction force can hope to - and either slip in your stealthy folks way further out, or just as a random one of the emergence signals.

And to distract Manticore by attacking through its junction you'd first have to defeat the defensive forces that guard each of it's remote termini... The tactic isn't physically impossible - but I'm just failing to imagine situations where it's the best available tactic.

Understood.

But what about in the sole capacity of sneaking in a very huuuge force with lots of faint signals. Then you'd want a bigger, more serious, more pointed distraction in the other direction.

But, sneaking a stealthed unit or two in beforehand, simply to lie doggo and wait to hyper out news of the beginning of the wormhole assault, would be enough. The same task as the dispatch boat (?) in the Yeltsin system was to signal when the natives were uprising.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble.—cthia's father. Incident in ?Axiom of Common Sense

Weird Harold wrote:The Darius Terminus is one of four destinations from the Felix Junction. I know of no hint anywhere that it is possible for two junctions to be linked.

Darned! Forgot about the secret Felix junction. The MAlign hasn't gotten the legal claim on it and is trying the obtain it. I forget just how secret Felix is. Is it like the SKM's situation where the information is out there, but just hidden or is it still truly secret? The ownership of the system is established, knowledge of the WHJ isn't.

If the GA twigs on that search and investigates it as some long shot chance to find the MAlign's Bolthole, that is likely the best shot of discovering Darius.

I didn't know about the "secret" Felix junction to begin with. *Harumph!*

So what we have here is a junction with at least one known tramline that leads straight to the dude with the scythe and stench of death as far as anyone other than the MA is concerned, and NO data on where the deadly end of the line is. Or is there data that has just "gotten lost" over the centuries that might still turn up?

Don't mind me, just wondering out loud.

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Just my opinion of course and probably not worth the paper it's not written on.